Fragile Wonderland
by MnM
Summary: Sometimes, to really look inside ourselves .. it comes to the ultimatum of good and evil. Time to place your bets on the table. Ken has. [prologue up]


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Wormmon! No, no . . . please come back! Please, I'm sorry! Wormmon, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry . . . I just _found_ you, how could you leave? It was me, it was _Him_ . . . I promise, Wormmon, I'll find you, and I'll make right it all. You sacrificed everything . . . oh, Wormmon . . . please . . . _  
  
I felt something stinging my face, little diamond-edged cuts and pricks that seemed to slice through even the pale clothes I wore. I was lacking a sense of pain physically beyond a certain extent, though -- most of it had culminated in my soul, where vicious little imps took turns and subsequent delight in digging their filthy claws into my heart. Curdling ichor, aided in its congealment by the sun that blazed overhead, only fueled their bloodlust; dining to their own contentment in a parasitic show that left me feeling as though I was about to shatter into a thousand pieces and blow away in the wind. Just as Wormmon had done, in his sacrifice . . .  
  
_. . . please, come back, _please _. . .  
  
_I stood up abruptly. From behind a half-shield of limp navy hair, my eyes were trying to follow the dispersal of Wormmon's earthly body as it was taken by the desert's scorching trade winds. I could feel nothing, _nothing _left but my own consuming emptiness. There was no remnant of him that would "stay with me always," no echoing comfort to be brought back by a gentle, nostalgic breeze. There was nothing. And that's exactly how I felt right then, too: a blackhole, a void, just something that took in all it could -- so before the brain could recognize and enjoy anything, it was crushed so viciously it could make you cry. But then again, no matter how hard I wished, I couldn't do_ that_. I couldn't expel any of the toxins my internal demons spewed with those saline dissonances. I wasn't beyond tears, oh no . . . I just didn't _know _how to cry.  
  
_. . . I'll kill Him. I'll kill Him for you, Wormmon . . ._  
  
A seemingly logical whispering inside of me told me that "He" was already long since dead and gone, and thankfully forever. There wasn't going to be a B-movie's cliche tenacity for the damned to walk the earth again: no puce-eyed, mummified corpse or immortalized, vampiric tyrant to burst out of the nearest dune and claim my neck with whetted fangs. The only sharpness I felt was the sand being whipped in my face, and the invisible blades of guilt that minced up my heart as though it was to be pate.  
  
"I gotta' go . . ."  
  
An explosion of fresh pain -- not to say that what had torn me up prior to that hadn'tbeen particularly vibrant -- as vocals were choked in saline ambiguity that threatened to course down my smudged cheeks, but only burned at the rims of my eyes like acid. Everything hurt. Even breathing . . . which to some extent was mercilessly lessened with the sucking vacuum that surrounded me, stealing the breath from my lungs before they could even draw it inward entirely.  
  
They were yelling. Their leader was, I remember. I wasn't quite listening, as the words didn't seem to reach me completely in the vacuity enclosing my head; after all, all that consumed me was the burning self-loathing and promises of vengeance_ (one slice for each and every last tear you've ever shed)_ that went unheard while in my mind. It was almost demented how driven I was to a goal that I had deemed impossible. To wrap my fingers around the sallow neck _(andsqueezeandsqueezeandsqueeze)_ of a lost despot was as likely as discovering a safe haven for my mind from all of the insanity, all of the hurt . . .  
  
I walked. I don't know how long. It was aimless, crossing dunes of sand that were not unlike their watery counterparts of tidal waves . . . up one cresting rise I would plod, as though to reach a sacred holy land I was unsure existed, only to find several thousand more laying in wait for me. They were patient. And so was I. I kept going, long after the cries of the Chosen had faded into the background to be replaced by howling wind . . . long after twilight had begun to set on the timeless horizon of the desert I could vaguely quote remembering from another era in my existance. Washed in an eerie half-light of pastel pink and purple, I plowed onward, even as the tempest of a sandstorm rose to greater pitches.  
  
Focusing on the stretching, reaching, beckoning fingers of pale light gave me a direction, however proper or incorrect it was. I was beyond notably righteous worry over whether or not I would find a way home . . . there was only that desire inside of me, along with my personal demons. Both spurred me onward. There would have to be break in all of the madness and chaos, I told myself confidentially, there would just have to be something I could hold onto for a little while longer.  
  
As I said, I don't know for how long I marched in that one-man procession. It couldn't have been terribly long, because it was before the twilight had managed to flee into night that it completely dawned upon me. The clouds had spread, and the light had showered down . . . or in this case, the unveiling of a shred of sanity and a scrap of hope to keep myself from splintering into discarded shambles to be taken by the breeze's ferocious widow.  
  
Even without a literal beam of godly grace in sight or divine star of Bethlehem to guide me through the sandy currents, it didn't matter as the tortuously unreal mountains began to transform more and more into gently rolling knolls. I supposed my eyes must have been deceiving me in my unparalleled despairing from the earlier day . . . for my feet would begin to rather meet with rough-hewn grass rather than the scorched whitecaps of a terrifically sun-baked desert. The sparse vegetation was pathetic, a murky shade of yellow-green that almost blended into the light canary sands. It still clung to the ground viciously nevertheless, and I found myself mostly stumbling on the jutting patches here and there as I began dragging my feet toward the beginning of the end of that haunting desert.  
  
My voraciousness for revenge may have not been as spry as I once thought, as no more than five feet from the checkerboard of jasper and primrose, I simply came to an abrupt halt. Lacking breath, and suddenly finding the sun's radiating heat seeming as though a ten-ton weight on my shoulders, it was not at all unexpected that I suddenly felt quite faint. My unfocused gaze tried to fix on any sort of landmark to keep me oriented . . . as otherwise I would merely keel over in such the environment, and then where would I be? My hand was drawn to my forehead, mopping up what perspiration had since begun to trickle down my face, slide off of my damp hair -- serving also to shield my wavering stare from the harsh sunlight for a better view.  
  
A shape in the distance. I took a step forward, and after an unassuming moment of hesitation, yet another. I strained for a better look, since the heat waves that were being given from the ground masked the exact silhouette; borders were blurred and distorted, like a fluid glob of obsidian mercury, but I could still distinguish the humanoid shape. My sluggish brain tried to place the inky profile to anything I would know personally, as I had the faintest telltale that I had in fact seen it before . . .  
  
That was just around when I stopped breathing.  
  
_It . . . it can't be . . .  
_  
It was still difficult to see as lazy wreathes of grit happened to steer themselves on the calmer breeze toward where I stood, augmenting and diminishing before my eyes in coils of abrasive saffron earth. I perceived the first differentiating characteristic after the soft whispering passed -- a strain of musical plinking discordant and harmonizing all at once. It was not unlike a soprano wind-chime, tones clashing and blending, stirred gently by the equally as faint disturbances of the air around it.  
  
The anthropoid had become much clearer as the curtains of sand were pressed through, and I caught sight of it entirely when my vision wasn't nearly so clouded. The raiment was what seized my attention first, considering it was quite odd for the sweltering locale I was stranded at. A nebulous shade of wild rose painted the outer layer of material, otherwise trimmed along the each edge with a conservative amount of honeyed gold cloth. It was, essentially, a tuxedo . . . long-sleeved despite the inescapable intensity of the sun's snarling rays, even complimented with old-fashioned coat-tails that comically extended to the knees like a grand maestro's, being blown askew in the wind.  
  
_But . . . that isn't possible . . ._  
  
A dress shirt of unblemished ivory stood out against the pallid hue of the over-jacket, frilled and crimped beyond belief, and looking as though it would have been very uncomfortable. The ensemble also supported a pair of slacks in that same rubicund color; even cufflinks had not been forgotten -- mere dabbles of quince artfully sculptured as small fleurs-de-lis took pride, one at each wrist. Unmistakably as exotic as anything else, a court jester's collar of patched triangular pieces in opal went about the neck and over the shoulders, perhaps connected to the said pleated shirt. A second collar, this time ruffled, was a lustrously aureate shade, and remained situated above the first.  
  
_You're . . ._  
  
As romantic as it was, the sprouting wings of rouge feathers from the persona's disheveled lavender hair were not as surprising as they should have been ("They must be the ears, as they do resemble a rabbit's," I thought). The melodic ringing I heard from before came from the golden jingle bells I discovered suspended from the base of either "ear" . . . but that was, of course, not what had caused me to hold my breath.  
  
_But . . . but you're . . ._  
  
Topaz blue eyes pierced straight into my own from behind a pair of glinting lenses, reflective glass nearly mirroring my awestruck visage despite the distance between the two of us. The dreamy, hazy quality was ethereal right then . . . before I could even utter one word, the figure held up a hand (encased in a wrist-length white glove, I would note) -- one index finger brought to vaguely smiling lips in a "shush" manner. It was then with the enigmatic gesture that, in a blink, he took off running at a mad speed.  
  
I watched Ichijouji Osamu disappear over the next hillock.  
  
_. . . but you're dead._  
  
Dazed and confused, I had to once more steel myself from merely surrendering to the will to collapse to the ground. My mouth had gone as dry as cotton balls, and tasted just as foul -- it _had _to have been a mirage. The desert heat was just affecting my mind, after all. Nothing more than that. Of course.  
  
_Onii-chan . . . a hallucination? I'm more fatigued than I thought . . . my eyes are playing tricks on me again.  
  
'But can you risk it? What if that _is _him . . .'_  
  
A little voice queried such from inside of me, in a mocking singsong that grated my nerves like never before. The perpetually unshed tears continued to jab at my nerves, but I merely took off at a sprint after where my ghostly brother may had gone to. Just over the rise. This would have seemed to be no easy feat regarding my condition . . . but a surreal surge of energy gave me the strength to fuel the decisive willpower, and so I went bounding. The idea was absurd. But still I ran --  
  
_As soon as I catch up to him (fancy that, Osamu as a *rabbit*?) we can all go home together and we'll be happy and Mom and Dad will finally be happy and they might love me because I found Osamu again and we'll be a family again and I'll let Osamu keep whatever he wants in his drawer and I'll always do whatever he says 'cause my sins will be erased and it won't be my fault he died and and and and oh God we'll live happily ever after, just like we were supposed to all along --_  
  
I tripped on something I failed to see in my path, which was not at all strange considering my blind racing was due to the fresh acidic screen of flashing liquid diamonds in my eyes. There is always a moment when you fall that you feel weightless, as though you were flying . . . and just then all thought was lost to me, and I only experienced the split-second before I blacked out as being more wondrous than I had ever imagined. There I was, dancing in the heavens _(oh with Osamu oh please with 'Nii-chan) _with wings of molten pearl . . .  
  
And so on Icarus' I flew.

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End file.
